Honorary Fellows

Aravind Yelery is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. Previously, he was associated with Shanghai Ji-Ou (Sino-European Commerce Ltd.) as a Sr. Corporate Consultant (Research). He is a fluent Chinese speaker and before commencing his research at Fudan University, Shanghai, he completed Mandarin language studies from the esteemed Nanjing Normal University, P R China. He is an alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where he was awarded the Doctorate for his research on China, focusing on the role of energy and economy in China’s transforming foreign policy. Before his PhD, he undertook M.Phil research on China’s SOEs and their re-structuring at the same centre at JNU.

Mr Ashok K. Kantha is an Honorary Fellow and former Director (2017- 22) of the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi; a Distinguished Fellow at Vivekananda International Foundation, New Delhi; and Chair of the Core Group on China of the Confederation of Indian Industry.

A career diplomat, Kantha was Ambassador of India to China until January 2016. Prior to this, he was Secretary (East) at Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi with responsibility for about 65 countries in India’s extended neighbourhood.

Professor Biswajit Dhar is Distinguished Professor, Council for Social Development, New Delhi. He was a Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and has served as the Director General of the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), a think-tank of Ministry of External Affairs. Professor Dhar was instrumental in the establishment of the Centre for WTO Studies of the Government of India and was the Head of the Centre for several years. He had also served as a Senior Consultant in the Planning Commission.

Professor Dhar has served as a member of the Indian delegation in multilateral treaty negotiations, including the World Trade Organization, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the Convention on Biological Diversity. He has been nominated in expert groups for several inter-governmental organizations.

Dr. G Venkat Raman is currently a Professor in the Area of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Management, Indore. Venkat is primarily a Sinologist. Apart from China studies, Venkat has developed a keen interest in the subject of Business Ethics during the last more than eleven years of his association with IIM Indore and IIM Kozhikode. Given his Political Science background Venkat brings in fresh perspectives in his teaching pedagogy and research. Venkat has co-authored a paper that got published in the Journal of Business Ethics arguing for a novel pedagogy called the Integrated Live Case Method Apart from teaching core courses like Introduction to International relations (for UG participants) and Ethics and CSR 9for PG participants) he offers elective courses like Power Rivalries and Global Governance in the twenty-first century, Understanding the China Challenge, and Political Risk Management.

Dr. Hemant Adlakha is Vice-Chairperson and Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, and Associate Professor at the Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Dr. Adlakha’s areas of research include political and foreign policy discourse in the PRC and modern Chinese Literature and Culture. He is a member of the International Editorial Committee, International Society for Lu Xun Studies, Seoul, Republic of Korea. His articles have appeared in China Report, The Diplomat, Japan Times, Encyclopaedia of Race and Racism 2nd Edition, The Washington Post etc. His co-translation of Lu Xun’s prose poetry collection from Chinese into Hindi was published by the NBT in November 2019.

Jabin T. Jacob is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies at the Shiv Nadar University, India and Adjunct Research Fellow at the National Maritime Foundation, New Delhi. He was formerly Fellow and Assistant Director at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi and Associate Editor of the journal China Report. Jacob holds a PhD in Chinese Studies from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and has spent time as a student / researcher / faculty in Taiwan, Singapore and France. His research interests include Chinese domestic politics and Chinese foreign and security policies in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.

Madhavi Thampi is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi, and former editor of the journal China Report. She taught Chinese History at the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Delhi from 1979 to 2014. Her major publications include Indians in China, 1800-1949 (2005) and China and the Making of Bombay (with Shalini Saksena, 2010). She also edited the volume India and China in the Colonial World (2005). She has coordinated the project to catalogue materials on modern China in the National Archives of India. Her main research interest lies in uncovering various aspects of the interactions between India and China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Madhurima Nundy is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), Delhi, India. She is presently a Fellow, Health and Human Development, Centre for Social and Economic Progress, New Delhi. She holds a PhD in Public Health from the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her areas of interest include researching health systems, health policies, commercialisation of healthcare and inequalities in health. She also uses comparative frameworks to study health systems. She has several publications and has been a regular contributor to policy analysis in the area of public health in China and India. Previously she was Assistant Director and Fellow at the ICS, Delhi (2012-21); Senior Programme Coordinator at the Public Health Resource Network, New Delhi (2009-12).

Partha Mukhopadhyay is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research since 2006. He was previously part of the founding team at the Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC), focusing on private participation in infrastructure. In previous positions, he has been with the Export-Import Bank of India, and with the World Bank in Washington. He has been on the faculty at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur and the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi.   He has published extensively, frequently writes for the national media and has also been associated with a number of government committees. Most recently, he was chair of the Working Group on Migration, Government of India and member of the High-Level Railway Restructuring Committee, Ministry of Railways and of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation.  He has previously been associated with the Committee on Allocation of Natural Resources and with the Prime Minister's Task Force on Infrastructure. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Council of LIRNEasia, Colombo.

He received his PhD in economics from New York University and an MA and M.Phil from the Delhi School of Economics.  In 2006, he was chosen as one of the inaugural Fellows of the India China Institute, New School, New York and in 2016, he was a selected for a Residency at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation. His research interests are in urbanisation, infrastructure, and the development paths of India and China.

Rama V. Baru is former Professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and an Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi, India. She is also an Honorary Professor at the India Studies Centre, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China. Her major areas of research interest include commercialisation of health services, infectious diseases, comparative health systems and health inequalities. She is the author of four books: Private Health Care in India: Social Characteristics and Trends (1998); School Health Services in India: The Social and Economic Contexts (2008); and Medical Insurance Schemes for the Poor: Who Benefits (2015). Her most recent publications by Routledge is a book (with Madhurima Nundy) titled Commercialisation of Medical Care in China: Changing Landscapes (2020), and another a co-edited volume (with Anuj Kapilashrami) titled Global Health Governance and Commercialisation in India: Actors, Institutions and the Dialectics of Global and Local (2018). She has contributed to many edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals. She is currently a member of the Ethics Committee at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the Technical Appraisal Committee for Health Technology Assessment, the Department of Health Research, the Ministry of Health, the Government of India and the Scientific Advisory Group, Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi.   
 

Ritu Agarwal is an Associate Professor at Centre for East Asian studies, School of International Studies, JNU. She holds a Ph.D. in Chinese studies from University of Delhi. She completed her M.A. in Political science, JNU. Her Doctoral work explored the micro-level agrarian transformation in Yunnan province and she is currently engaged in questions of provincial transformation especially in Yunnan. Her research interests are: rural political economy, urbanization, gender studies and provincial politics. Dr. Ritu Agarwal studied Mandarin Chinese from Beijing language and Culture University, Beijing. She was a visiting scholar to Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Kunming, and visiting fellow to Yunnan Minzu University and Yunnan University recently.

Rityusha Mani Tiwary teaches at the Department of Political Science, Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi and is currently an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. She has been the Assistant Editor of China Report: A Journal of East Asian Studies, the flagship journal of the Institute, since 2016. She holds a Ph.D in Chinese Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The current focus of her research includes unpacking the interplay of leadership, power and hegemony in East Asia and China’s role in shaping regionalism in the twin domain of political economy and foreign policy. She likes to employ critical theory-comparativist lenses to study China and India regarding nationalism, borders, gender and culture. She was the recipient of the Visiting Program for Young Sinologists in 2017, awarded by the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing.

Sabaree Mitra has been teaching Chinese Language, Literature and Culture in Jawaharlal Nehru University, since 1990. Her basic training has been in Chinese Language and Literature and her research interest includes contemporary Chinese literature, criticism and cultural history. Her books include Purbadiganter Kabita: Samakaleen tin china kabir ek jhalak (2002), a collection of contemporary Chinese poetry translated into Bengali, Literature and Politics in 20^th century China: Issues and Themes (2005), and, Chinese Women Writers and Gender Discourse (1976-1996) (2008)

Sandip Mishra is Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at University of Delhi. He has published several articles in Indian and Korean academic journals along with book chapters and contributed opinion articles to Indian and Korean newspapers such as Korea Times, Indian Express, Financial Express, Pioneer, and Statesman. Security Dynamics of East Asia and Korean Peninsula is his forthcoming book. His latest article “India and Republic of Korea: Growing Strategic Partnership”, was published in Foreign Affairs Journal, July-September 2012 Issue.

Santosh Pai, has been offering legal services to clients in the India-China corridor since 2010. His areas of interest include Chinese investments in India, India-China comparative law and policy, cross-cultural negotiations and board governance. He holds a B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) degree from NLSIU, Bangalore, LL.M. (Chinese law) from Tsinghua University, Beijing and an MBA from Vlerick University, Belgium (Peking University campus). His manuscript "Practical Guide on Investing in India for Chinese investors" has been translated into Chinese and published by China Law Press. Santosh is currently a partner at Link Legal, an Indian law firm. He is a member of CII's Core Group on China, teaches two courses on India-China business at IIM Shillong and volunteers at NGOs in his free time.

Sreemati Chakrabarti, Chairperson of the Institute of Chinese Studies, is former Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi. She has also been Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi; Head of the Department of East Asian Studies for three terms and Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies (2009-2012). Currently she is also an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. She was a Visiting Faculty at Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China in 2018. She has a Master’s degree in Regional Studies- East Asia from Harvard University and holds a Doctorate in Political Science from Columbia University. She has authored three books: China and the Naxalites, Mao, China’s Intellectuals and the Cultural Revolution and a National Book Trust volume titled China.

Dr. Usha Chandran is an Honorary Fellow at Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. She is Assistant Professor, teaching Chinese language, Literature, translation, as well as interpretation to Bachelors and Masters students at the Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Pursued MPhil and Ph.D from the same centre. Keen on using Chinese language skills to understand various facets of China, specifically the issues of Gender. Major research interests are, Chinese Language and Literature, Gender issues in China and comparison with India and West, Comparing Women's subjectivity in some of Lu Xun, Tagore and Virginia Woolf's works in a comparative perspective and role of language in gender. Recent research includes looking at the role of language in practicing gender. Organised an international symposium on " Language and Gender" in JNU. Published papers both in English and in Chinese on Gender issues in China, comparative perspective of women's movement in India and China, as well as women's subjectivity in Lu Xun's literary work.

Vijay K Nambiar joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1967. He studied Chinese in Hong Kong, and served in China from 1970-72 and returned to South Block and Udyog Bhavan until 1976. He then served as First Secretary in Tito's Yugoslavia. He was posted from 1979 to 1982 in the Indian Mission at the United Nations (UN) in New York and served in Delhi during the 1983 NAM Summit and after. From 1985 to 1987, he was India's Ambassador in Algeria. He returned to Delhi as Joint Secretary East Asia in the MEA in 1987 and helped prepare for Rajiv Gandhi's historic visit to China in 1988. Subsequently, he served as India's Ambassador/ High Commissioner in Afghanistan (1990-1992), Malaysia (1993-1996), China (1996-2000), Pakistan (2000-2001) and Permanent Representative to the UN in New York (2002-2004). Post-retirement, he served as Deputy National Security Adviser of India (2004-2006). He was then deputed by the Government of India to serve in the United Nations Secretariat as Under Secretary-General, Special Adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan (2006-2007), then as Chef de Cabinet to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (2007-2012) and later as Adviser on Myanmar (2012-2016).